


Fight and Flight

by mistyzeo



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: BAMF John, Case Fic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fist Fights, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Snippets, canoodling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 21:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyzeo/pseuds/mistyzeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You don’t have to be looking for trouble to find it.</i>  Holmes and Watson get into a brawl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight and Flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tweedisgood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tweedisgood/gifts).



> This is more like a case snippet than a proper case fic, but I was aiming for established relationship H/C with a lighter tone. *handwaving* Fights! Thanks are due to Obstinatrix for tidying. Remaining mistakes and funny business is my fault.

The case involving the Crooked Duke of Penton did not end the way any of us had expected. Holmes had orchestrated every detail he could get his hands on, and after a fortnight of late nights subsisting on pipe smoke, we found ourselves in a seedy public house in the East End, sharing a pint with Barty Collins, our prime witness to the Duke's indiscretions. Holmes and I were disguised in rough wools, dirty boots, and low-brimmed caps, and Collins had enough drink in him that he did not appear to suspect anything as Holmes steered the conversation in the right direction.

It was my task to keep an eye on the crowd around us. Collins was not a willing witness, and he had declined less than politely to talk to the official force about the whole affair. Holmes suspected it was out of fear rather than loyalty to the Duke, and had spent that aforementioned time building up evidence to this effect. Now that we were well inside Collins's territory, we were at the mercy of his compatriots, and none of them looked all too friendly to outsiders.

For a good half an hour, Holmes and Collins talked easily, Holmes winning the man's trust with bawdy jokes and complaints about an imaginary employer. Collins had begun to relate a story about a recent tryst he'd had with a young lady of the household help, when the plan fell to pieces. I had not been vigilant, and we had been recognized.

'Oy!' shouted a man behind Collins, standing so that he was looking Holmes square in the face, 'You're that detective chap! I've seen you in the papers!'

'No—' Holmes protested, but it was too late. Collins was spooked, and shoved off his barstool so quickly that it clattered to the ground. As he pushed his way through the crowd, spilling drinks and shattering conversations, the bodies in the pub closed in around us. Holmes put up his hands in an attempt to placate the circle that had formed, and I flexed my thigh to feel my Webley revolver safe in my pocket.

'Gentlemen,' Holmes said, 'I've no wish to deceive you. My name is Sherlock Holmes, and I am investigating a murder at the behest of Scotland Yard.'

'Scotland Yard'll be investigating a murder soon enough,' someone behind me said. My heart was racing.

'Holmes,' I hissed.

He reached back, closing his strong fingers around my wrist, and that was all the warning I had before he was dragging me bodily through the crowd, much the way that Collins had done. Rather than stop our passage, as I was afraid they would do, the patrons parted in front of us and we spilled out into the street.

For a moment, I thought we had got away with our skins intact. Really, the crowd had simply wanted to go on drinking without a fight in their midst, and poured a parcel of men out after us. None of them were familiar to me, and none of them wanted strangers among them.

The biggest of them stood toe to toe with Holmes. Holmes was taller, but the man was built like a barrel and his arms were thickly roped with muscle. My heart rate soared. Suddenly I could see more clearly the way that Holmes held himself, cautiously defiant, and the way the man's fingers twitched at his sides. I heard traffic in the main streets, and the scuffle of rats in the alley. I smelled the rubbish and filth of the street that surrounded us.

Holmes was speaking: 'We're not looking for trouble, gentlemen.' A foolish thing to say.

'You don't have to be lookin' to find it,' the big man told him, and socked him square in the gut.

I leapt forwards as Holmes folded in half, and crashed into another man who had jumped in my path. We fell to the ground and I landed hard on my shoulder, but I got a good grip on his collar and rolled on top of him. I pinned him to the ground long enough to get a knee into the meat of his thigh, making him shout, but other hands grasped the back of my coat and pulled me away.

I flailed, gracelessly, and felt my fist connect with flesh. A grunt, a curse, and then I received a glancing blow to my jaw for my trouble. I managed to pull away, stumbled and fell on one knee, and recovered.

I turned around, and the big brute's hands gripped me about my throat. I had the forethought to take one last gasp of air before my supply was cut off. I grasped at his thick wrists, staring into his hard, pinched face. I clawed at the tendons in his hands, kicked at him with my feet, but every blow I dealt was nothing compared to the damage he could do with his iron grip. I felt my throat closing on itself, a tightness in my chest as I struggled for air.

I heard Holmes shout my name. Over my would-be-murderer's shoulder, I saw him striving to free himself from the grip of two men who held his arms while a third took aim at his torso. He broke away on one side to protect himself, only to be grasped again. He was calling to me and I could barely hear him over the thudding of my pulse in my ears.

My pocket. As I squirmed and fought, I felt the shape of my revolver in my pocket. Stupid! An obvious solution to my imminent demise, and so close at hand! I let go of the brute's forearms and got a grip on it. Jabbing its muzzle into his ribs was deeply satisfying, even as my vision went dim.

The grip on my neck slackened, and I was able to hold the pistol in a dangerous place as I sucked in a desperate, painful breath. The man backed off, cursing me for a swindler and a cheat. I accepted the insults with quavering grace, preferring an unequal advantage to being choked to death in an alley.

'Let him go,' I rasped, my gun hand shaking. I was more worrisome to them in my unsteady state, and Holmes was freed almost immediately.

He hurried to me, grasping my jacket with both hands, and hissed into my ear, 'The police will arrive at any moment; go!'

My legs barely obeyed me, but with the pistol in my right hand and Holmes's sleeve in my left, we quickly left the men shouting abuse after us. The moment we rounded the corner onto the main street, I shoved the pistol away into my pocket again and stumbled against a wall, still gasping for air.

Holmes stopped and stooped down in front of me, holding my chin up with his hand and patting my chest for any signs of injury. In the light of the streetlamp, I could see that the left side of his face was beginning to swell. He grimaced, spat blood over his shoulder, and wiped his mouth on his jacket cuff. His lip was split.

We stared at each other for a moment, assessing, and then Holmes began to laugh. He tugged me by my coat and pulled me upright, and we leaned on one another to hurry away down the street.

'My brave Watson,' he said. 'You've lost your hat, I'm afraid.'

He flagged a cab as it rolled past, and we climbed in. He winced as he sat down. I touched my throat carefully, feeling the places that were tender. My knuckles, too, were throbbing.

Holmes laughed again in the quiet, safe darkness of the cab. He was pleased with himself: he thought that had gone rather well. I shook my head at him and reached over for his hand. I held it in mine, my heart still pounding, a frenzy racing through my blood.

'Your face,' I said finally.

'It's not a handsome one,' he said. 'I doubt I will suffer much.'

'Holmes,' I chided, squeezing his fingers. 'Does it hurt?'

'I will have a gorgeous black eye,' Holmes replied. He touched his face gingerly with his other hand and nodded.

'I'll see to it when we get home,' I promised, privately thanking God that we would make it there tonight.

\---

'That was damnably stupid, Holmes,' I said, handing him a cold, damp towel and sitting down across from him with a grimace. He grinned at me, his teeth still stained red and his left eye so swollen it was almost shut.

'Yes, it rather was,' he said, 'but at least we got our answers.'

'Did we?' I asked. I took the towel from him again when it appeared he was not inclined to use it himself. I touched it to his face and he winced, but then I could apply some pressure to the swelling. 'Hold this in place.'

'Enough of them,' Holmes said. 'We know Collins wasn't where he said he was when Hilton was killed. We know he saw something he doesn't wish to divulge.'

'You think he saw the Duke do it. How are your teeth?'

Holmes moved his tongue around inside his mouth, and then said, 'Fine, all accounted for.'

'Not loose?'

'None.'

'Good. Where's the blood coming from?'

'I bit my tongue.'

'Let me see.'

He did, and I saw the swelling where his teeth had cut the muscle.

'It'll heal.'

'I know. I think the Duke saw him see, that's the trouble. The Duke's frightened him into submission and he won't give up anything for fear the Duke will find out. What have I told you about instinct?'

'Don't stand up,' I said quickly, putting a hand on his knee. 'I'm not finished with you.'

He flashed another grin at me, the skin of his lips pulling tight and opening the cut again so that fresh blood welled up. 'You worry too much.'

'Your man had enormous fists, Holmes,' I said. I started to unbutton his shirt; his collar had been torn away in the scuffle. He straightened up and winced again. 'Careful.'

'What about you?' he asked.

'My neck is rather sore,' I said, 'and my shoulder hurts like the devil, but I think I'll manage.'

'Ah, Watson,' Holmes said, reaching out without any depth perception to pat hopefully at my cheek. 'Always reliable in a fight.'

'It helped that I had a pistol. Give me the compress.'

He did, and I helped him slide his shirt down his arms. I pulled his vest up over his head and unfastened his trousers.

'This would be easier if you were lying down,' I said, handing the compress back. 'Can you manage?'

'Can I—' he began, sneering, but then bit back a sharp cry of pain when he tried to, and I instantly put my hands under his shoulders, lowering him carefully to the seat of the settee.

'I'm worried that you've got a cracked rib,' I said softly. He made an angry sort of noise through his teeth, his face turned away from me. The bruising had already begun, blooming red about halfway up his side. 'Tell me where it hurts.'

I began to palpate his torso carefully, feeling my way across the bruise, which made him grunt, following the lines of his ribcage.

'There,' Holmes gasped suddenly, as I touched a tender spot that yielded under my fingertips.

'How badly?' I asked, drawing back.

He let out a shaking breath, and then said, 'Quite badly.'

'I have to keep going.'

'Sally forth, Doctor.'

I completed my examination as quickly as I could while still being thorough, hating to feel him tremble with pain. He hid it well, his face still hidden by the towel on his eye, and his right hand in a fist on his hip.

I fished another cold, damp compress out of the basin and laid it over his ribs when I was finished. 'I can't say for certain if it is fractured,' I said, 'but you'll be laid up for a few days, and you must promise me that you'll be gentle with yourself. Fractured ribs are not a laughing matter, Holmes. Are you listening?'

'Yes, yes,' he said irritably, and tried to sit up again. Helped by another spasm of pain as the muscles of his torso contracted, I kept him down with a hand on his shoulder.

'If it is still this painful by Thursday, then it is most certainly fractured. Otherwise, it is simply a muscular contusion.'

Holmes groaned his displeasure at this.

'Is there any more pain?' I asked.

'None.'

'In your abdomen? Your legs? You were limping, is your ankle all right?'

'Watson,' Holmes said, 'your bedside manner is abominable.'

I stared at him. My bedside manner had always been inoffensive, and I'd even thought it was rather good.

He smiled at me slyly from underneath the compress. 'You haven't once offered to kiss anything better.'

Rolling my eyes, I bent to press a very careful kiss to the outer edge of the bruise, where the skin was a familiar shade of pale. He slid his right hand into my hair for a caress, and I kissed him again, on the belly. He let out a soft sigh of appreciation, and I slid my hand up his leg to part his thighs as I worked my way slowly towards the unfastened top of his trousers.

He murmured something indistinct and I slipped that hand up between his legs to cover the growing bulge of his groin. Holmes said, 'Ah,' and then tried to lift his hips into the pressure of my hand, but aborted the motion with a rather less pleased noise of discomfort.

'Bloody hell, that hurt,' he muttered.

'Maybe we'd best not,' I said, gallantly disappointed. I removed my hand.

Climbing to my feet, I offered him both hands palm up, which he took. There was a moment of mutual grunting and cursing when my shoulder protested and he sat up, but then he was upright and we were both intact.

In the bedroom, we shared the duties of undressing one another. Holmes pulled my shirt off of me, my shoulder too stiff to move, and I untied his shoes and helped him out of his trousers. Gingerly, we slipped into our nightshirts and climbed into bed, and spent a few minutes arranging ourselves. Holmes grimaced and winced and bit his lip, trying to get comfortable on his side, and I fussed over him and the compresses and the blankets until he told me to shut up and lie down or he'd have me thrown out.

With half his face covered by the towel, he gazed at me in the lamplight, and reached out to touch my throat. 'You'll have a fine collar tomorrow,' he said, fingertip barely brushing my Adam's apple. 'Tell me true, Watson, are you all right?'

I scoffed. 'Please, Holmes. You've dragged me into worse situations. Of all the things that could have gone wrong tonight, and of those that did, I'd say we fared well.'

'Yes,' he said, smiling lopsided. 'I'd say we did.'

\---

I lay awake for a long time, restless as I was with the latent energy from the fight. I pictured it again and again: Holmes being struck and doubling over; Holmes held fast by two shadowy figures, struggling to get free; the fear in Collins's eyes when he heard Holmes's name shouted across the bar.

'Holmes,' I whispered suddenly, somehow unable to raise my voice in the darkened room. 'Holmes, listen.'

I heard him shift and grunt in pain, and then he said, 'What is it?' His voice was bleary with sleep.

'Collins must have recognised you,' I said. 'He was there, that day on the estate, you spoke to him then. We weren't disguised very thoroughly tonight; he knew it was you, but he didn't want to be seen talking to you. Could the Duke have informants among Collins's friends?'

Holmes sighed. 'Yes, Watson, that was my thought as well. But I expect Collins will turn up on our doorstep in the morning, actually. I suggested as much in my note.'

'Your— your note?'

Holmes's hand found its way to my chest and up to cover my mouth with two fingers. 'Yes,' he said. 'I slipped the poor man a note before we were interrupted. I suspected it would happen; I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier. Now, please, for the love of God, my dear man, let me sleep. You harp on about it quite enough, one would think you'd jump at the chance to keep me unconscious.'

'Shut up,' I muttered, but with him breathing quietly beside me, confident in his scheme, I was finally able to sleep as well.

\---

In the morning, our bell rang, as promised. Holmes's bruises were much worse than the night before, the blue-black patch on his ribs spread outwards like oil on water. His eye was swollen completely shut, and he had bravely moved from the bedroom to the sitting room and spent most of breakfast whinging about the discomfort.

I was confident he was going to live after all.


End file.
